Barriada La Libertad and Los Charcos Community: workers forced to live in motorhomes in Lanzarote

A hotel cook, a former waiter, a doctor, a retired pastry chef and a pensioner are part of the neighborhoods that grow in the parking lots of Costa Teguise, due to the lack of housing

May 30 2024 (20:17 WEST)
Luca with his daughter in a caravan in Costa Teguise. Photo: Juan Mateos.
Luca with his daughter in a caravan in Costa Teguise. Photo: Juan Mateos.

The unaffordable prices of rental housing in Lanzarote are pushing many desperate workers to look for other alternatives. More than a hundred families already live occupying unfinished tourist complexes on the island, as is the case of the abandoned skeleton of Costa Teguise or that of the Faro de Pechiguera in Playa Blanca, pending a judicial resolution to kick them out. In addition to this, there are dozens of employees who have been living for months in motorhomes parked in Costa Teguise.

"I thought Lanzarote was the paradise I knew 15 years ago," confesses from inside a motorhome an Argentine doctor who lives in the parking lot of Los Charcos beach in Costa Teguise. The 61-year-old woman arrived in Lanzarote last February to work in several public health centers on the island. After several unsuccessful attempts to rent a house where her pet could enter, she came across houses for which they were asking for more than 1,500 euros per month. In addition, she had to leave them at the beginning of summer. 

Given the lack of alternatives, she decided to buy the motorhome that she planned to acquire in her retirement. "We are not hippies, we are workers," she says in an interview with La Voz, in which she confesses that she had never been in such conditions before. 

The difficulties of living in a house on wheels and the impossibility of finding decent housing has led her to accept a better job offer in another autonomous community, where they include housing. "They force the city councils, that if they need health centers in tourist sites they have to put the house," she emphasizes. 

In that same motorhome parking lot, which they have renamed Los Charcos Bajo Neighborhood Community, lives a man from Gran Canaria with his partner, who works in one of the hotels in Costa Teguise. He receives a payment for a disability and his husband is a salaried employee, but the high price of rentals has pushed them to choose: live in a vehicle or return to their home in Gran Canaria. "It is very difficult to rent, but the houses for sale are also very expensive," he laments. 

Proof of this is that the price of housing for sale increased by 23.7% between February 2023 and the same year of 2024. In addition, the average price to buy an apartment in Arrecife already reaches 200,000 euros. "Precisely for that reason, because there are no houses, there are no professionals in Lanzarote, professionals are not found in hotels," emphasizes this citizen of Gran Canaria. 

"Until a week before I was kicked out of the apartment I didn't know if I would have a place to go. It was then that I got this motorhome," reveals another of the neighbors who has been living for two months in a roulotte in the tourist town in the same parking lot. There she has made a group with these neighbors in the same situation as her. 

This citizen, who prefers to remain anonymous, for fear of reprisals, works as a cook in one of the hotels in Lanzarote and lives with her sister in a second-hand house on wheels and without hot water. The lack of housing forced her to separate from her children, 20 and 24 years old, also workers in the hotels on the island, who now share a house with a woman and her baby. "It's one thing for them to leave and another for you to have to separate because they kick you out," she explains. 

Many of her coworkers have had to leave the island due to lack of housing, others have been pushed to do the same as her. In her case, her second-hand motorhome allows her to shower (with cold water), cook and have electricity from the sun. "You sign up at the gym to shower for half an hour with hot water," she jokes in a conversation with her neighbors. 

"We help each other. There are times that living in a house you don't know your neighbors and here you know everyone. For example, if I run out of gas, I run and they help me," she says. 

One of the motorhomes converted into housing in Costa Teguise. Photo: Juan Mateos.
One of the motorhomes converted into housing in Costa Teguise. Photo: Juan Mateos.

 

 

Life in a Berlingo

The coronavirus pandemic completely changed the life of Antonio Delgado. After a divorce, a depression and four suicide attempts he rebuilds his life as he can in a Berlingo-type van in which he has lived for four years. Although he was born in Cádiz, this 63-year-old neighbor has spent more than two thirds of his life in Lanzarote.

On the island he started as a chef in a pastry shop and with the same affection with which he remembers the most complicated cakes that he was commissioned, he now takes care of the small garden that he has made in a parking lot of the Las Cucharas beach in Costa Teguise. Several tomato plants, a basil plant and even small melons survive in a planter in the parking lot. There also flourish small shoots of vineyard. 

"My life changed 75%. This is another type of life, but it is life too," he confesses during an interview with La Voz. His pension of 900 euros does not give him to be able to afford access to rental housing, with increasingly strained prices: "Either I eat, or I live here and I prefer to eat."

In his small van he has a mattress and several drawers as a tool store. "I am the handyman here, the one who has the tools, everyone calls me and says Antonio, Antonio, even the girl," he boasts proudly. Proof of this is the solar energy system that he has installed on his own on the roof of his car to have light. "We help each other, we should put a name on it, it could be called La Libertad neighborhood," he reflects.

 

More than 15 house changes in three years

The girl is the daughter of one of his neighbors, Luca, a 31-year-old Italian who has been living in a motorhome two parking lots further on for eight months. For this European neighbor, the difficulty in finding a home led him to buy a second-hand Italian camper. "I was tired of looking for an apartment, I have spent in almost 15 houses in three years and everything is scams," he says. 

Luca says that one of the housing ads he found on Facebook turned out to be a scam and after three weeks renting a room in a house in Montaña Blanca he was kicked out. "I have been through all the scams, I was even arrested here [in Teguise]. The only thing I found for 300 euros was a room that had been converted into a house.

It turned out that the owners were growing marijuana plants, and  I had nothing to do with it, just when I had taken out all the things and at the beginning of the following week I was leaving, on Saturday morning the police entered. That's when I decided to buy a caravan." In his new life in the parking lots of Costa Teguise, Luca plans voluntary cleanings of the surroundings and gardens.

 

Leaving the hotels to fulfill a dream

In addition to this is Francisco Jiménez, a 39-year-old Andalusian who has been working as a waiter in hotels since he was 23. His landlord raised the rent from 400 to 600 euros and then from 600 to 800 euros, so he decided to leave the house. "With the time I've been away from my house I could have bought a plot of land with the money I've dedicated to rent, that's for sure," he reflects.

After ten years on the island, he decided to make a change in his life. This Spaniard stopped working as a waiter, to be able to dedicate himself to his true passion, music. Now he offers concerts in tourist accommodations and with what he earns he can live in the caravan. 

Francisco attends us while putting strings on his guitar, sitting in an armchair, with the lectern in front. He is the only one in the Barriada La Libertad who had the project of living in a caravan sometime. "The prices of the rents, which are unbearable, was what ended up convincing me," he reveals, "it is a life that I like. I am trying to save money, for the day to buy a house."

Francisco Jiménez next to his van in the parking lot of Las Cucharas. Photo: Juan Mateos.
Francisco Jiménez next to his van in the parking lot of Las Cucharas. Photo: Juan Mateos.

 

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